Success Pillar in Construction: Vision

Monday, December 19, 2022

The second leadership pillar is vision - defined as the “clarity and acceptance of short, medium, and long term goals for the organization. If there is no vision or the team is not bought into the vision, your initiative will fail.”

In this webinar, e-Builder invited James Davidson with the Office of Facilities Planning and Construction at Texas A&M University and Kimberly Kennedy, the Director of Engineering and Construction with Allegheny County Sanitary Services, to talk about how a great vision has impacted their organizations. They describe how a solid, well communicated vision drives organizational change, helps reach goals, and increases stakeholder engagement.

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Watch the full Vision Success Pillar Webinar

Creating a unified vision

A unified vision within these two organizations wasn’t just dictated by leadership - their vision was solidified after months of discussion with stakeholders. By engaging and including stakeholders early on in the discovery phase, the stakeholders involved began to “care about the vision and the program.”

When creating a unified vision, it’s a study of continuous process improvement - those involved need to be flexible and adaptable. Kimberly says, “it was eye opening to see each other's processes for the first time and being able to streamline them into one standard process.” Incorporating stakeholder input early, and continuously, helps to streamline that vision and get the entire organization invested into common goals.

“Keeping it relevant, involving multiple users - we have some people here who don’t use e-Builder at all, but I still think we have to talk to them because there is opportunity. They’re not ready today, but they could be. If they can see what we are doing over here, and they can trust the data - the more we use it, the more the data reporting is accurate, then you can build trust and expand your users within the organization.”

- Kimberly Kennedy, Allegheny County Sanitary Authorities

A solid vision drives organizational change

For Allegheny County Sanitary Services, Kimberly says that their vision is “ultimately about compliance,” and achieving compliance year after year for their load of capital projects. For them, remaining compliant involves being able to report, track, schedule, and forecast requirements. A successful compliant project requires more than a simple spreadsheet or disconnected data - which is where e-Builder shines with the cloud-based construction project management system.

As an organization grows and visions expand, the methods for achieving goals need to be upgraded. Ultimately, a vision of “being compliant” led to e-Builder implementation.

Team Meeting

Texas A&M University: Organization vision and best practices

The Texas A&M University System has 11 universities, 8 state agencies, and over 151,000 students, and has used their vision to bring to life many capital projects. The office of Facilities Planning and Construction is currently managing in excess of 45 projects, totaling over $2.1 billion.

James Davidson gives some insight into the best practices his organization has discovered over the years of working with e-Builder and bringing vision into the culture of his organization:

  • Involve as many people in the organization as you can when creating a vision.
  • Setup a mechanism for continuous process improvement.
  • Provide training for the staff - particularly when implementing new technology such as e-Builder.

When the vision is solid, success follows. Connect with e-Builder to get the bigger picture of what digital construction project management software can do for your organization.

Watch episode 3: Success Pillar - Administration